LibreOffice

LibreOffice is the free power-packed Open Source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base.

Installation

In the past, the installation of at least 1 language pack was required. Currently, LibreOffice detects your system defaults; manual installation of a language pack is no longer mandatory. See help.libreoffice.org for additional information.

Check the optional dependencies pacman displays. If you want to use LibreOffice Base, you must install a Java Runtime Environment: see Java. You may need hsqldb2-javaAUR to use some modules in LibreOffice Base.

Theme

To force the use of a certain VCL UI interface, use one of the SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen, SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=kde4, SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk or SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3environment variables. These variables can be uncommented in /etc/profile.d/libreoffice-fresh.sh or /etc/profile.d/libreoffice-still.sh; note that this has no effect using LXDE desktop environment since the SAL_USE_VCLPLUGINenvironment variable is afterwards set to gtk by the script /usr/bin/startlxde. In order to use gtk3 toolkit with LXDE the SAL_USE_VCLPLUGINenvironment variable needs to be set after launching the desktop environment.

However, if it looks like it is using Windows 95/98 icons, go to Tools > Options... in the menus (which presents the Options Dialog), then select LibreOffice > Accessibility and uncheck "Automatically detect high-contrast mode of operating system".

If that does not work immediately, you may need to change the icon set that is in use; this is also in the Options Dialog, under LibreOffice > View with two pop-up boxes for "Icon size and style" (the latter pop-up box should be changed to something other than "High-contrast").

Firefox themes

LibreOffice can use Firefox themes. Enter LibreOffice options and choose Personalization > Select Theme, then paste the URL of your favourite one. A convenient button in the dialog box lets you open the browser.

Extension management

For more extensions, check the AUR, the built-in LibreOffice Extension manager, or libreplanet.

Language aids

Spell checking

For spell checking, please make sure hunspell is properly installed; this should be the case for both still and fresh LibreOffice versions. Then install a language dictionary for hunspell like hunspell-en for English, hunspell-de for German, etc. Then enable the Writing aids by selecting the check-box in Tools -> Options -> Language Settings -> Writing Aids -> Hunspell SpellChecker after restarting LibreOffice.

For grammar checking, several tools are available. The most common is LanguageTool. While the languagetool is available, it is not packaged as a LibreOffice extension. It is thus recommended to install the LibreOffice extension manually or with libreoffice-extension-languagetoolAUR instead. Even though the extension comes bundled with LanguageTool, this does not conflict with languagetool.

After this extension has been installed, please make sure you have a Java 8 runtime installed (jre8-openjdk). Indeed, Languagetool uses Java and may slow down or briefly hang LibreOffice, particularly while opening documents. Fortunately this is usually only when initially opening a document and is usually not apparent otherwise. Once installed, you want to enable it as the default environment for LibreOffice. To do that go to "Tools" --> "Options" --> "Advanced" and select the appropiate JRE (it will be shown as 1.8.0) then press "Ok". You will be prompted to restart the LibreOffice suite. Once restarted you will be able to install Languagetools without trouble.

French-speaking users are advantaged here: they do not need to install LanguageTool nor Java. Dicollecte provides a nice Python extension, specifically designed for Frenchs. You can install it from the website or via libreoffice-extension-grammalecte-frAUR. In any case, this extensions also comes with the French dictionaries otherwise provided by hunspell-fr.

Offline help for en-US

As of version 5.2.2, libreoffice-fresh provides the offline help files for en-US. Help files for different locales is provided by the appropriate libreoffice language package, (i.e., libreoffice-fresh-en-za provides the help files for en-ZA locales).

Installing macros

If you intend to use macros, you must have a Java Runtime Environment enabled.

The default path for macros in Arch Linux is different from most Linux distributions. Its location is: ~/.config/libreoffice/4/user/Scripts/.

Troubleshooting

Font substitution

These settings can be changed in the LibreOffice options. From the drop-down menu, select Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Fonts. Check the box that says Apply Replacement Table. Type Andale Sans UI in the font box and choose your desired font for the Replace with option. When done, click the checkmark. Then choose the Always and Screen only options in the box below. Click OK.
You will then need to go to Tools > Options > LibreOffice > View, and uncheck "Use system font for user interface". If you use a non-antialised font, such as Arial, you will also need to uncheck "Screen font antialiasing" before menu fonts render correctly.

To avoid overwriting on update you can copy /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice in /usr/local/bin. Original post here.

LibreOffice does not detect my certificates

If you cannot see the certificates when trying to sign a document, you will need to have the certificates configured in Mozilla Firefox (or Thunderbird). If after that LibreOffice still does not show them, set the MOZILLA_CERTIFICATE_FOLDER environment variable to point to your Mozilla Firefox (or Thunderbird) folder:

If that is not enough, ensure that LibreOffice starts using the gtk interface - see #Theme.

If this still does not work correctly, try using the gen interface instead. [2]

AutoText expected default behaviour not functional in system locales other than en_US

If expected default AutoText behaviour is not present (for example, typing fn in a document in Writer and then pressing the F3 key does not result in the automatic insertion of a numbered function) when the system locale is not en_US you need to add the default en_US AutoText templates to your AutoText path. To do this, go to Tools > AutoText, then click on Path... and add the following path to the list: /usr/lib/libreoffice/share/autotext/en-US. AutoText should now work as expected by default.